‘Christians,out here?’ Encountering Street-Pastors in the post-secular spaces of the UK’s night-time economy

Introduction

Street-Pastors are interdenominational, Christian volunteers who provide ‘on-street care’ to people in the public spaces of the night-time economy. The first patrols were established in London in 2003 and now operate in over 250 urban locations that range from large cities to market towns in the UK. While these foundations have undoubtedly been laid through a series of strategic partnerships (for example between The Ascension Trust ¹ and the police), what interests us in this paper are the everyday practices these faith groups have used to establish post-secular spaces in the heart of the night-time economy. Building on the socio-cultural turn in studies of volunteering (Conradson, 2003), we contribute to work that has called for greater attention to be placed on the ways in which religious faith and ethics are performed to create liminal spaces of understanding in urban areas (Cloke and Beaumont 2012; Cloke et al., 2007). Three principal issues are examined. First, the paper considers the significance of faith-based organisation (FBOs) in the context of the urban night-time economy. Second, the paper highlights how Street-Pastors have used rhythmic practices, such as walking, to synchronise their activities with those of the night-time economy in order to maximise their visibility. Finally, it explores ways in which Street-Pastors have adopted a strategy of encounters to engage more effectively with urban spaces and activities.

The post-secular city and the night-time economy

The idea of the post-secular city has been used to describe an apparent fusion of religion and secularism in urban public life (Beaumont and Baker, 2011a; Molendijk et al., 2010). Some commentators have argued that faith-based actions have the potential to bring about beneficial rapprochements between secular and religious actors (Cloke, 2011; Cloke and Beaumont, 2012). Some forms of religious action have been criticised for their part in the neoliberal restructuring of the welfare state (Williams et al., 2012) and so it is only by studying in detail the emerging interactions between religion and urbanism that it is possible to appraise the value of these alliances and understand how complex political and cultural dynamics are played out in particular spaces of the contemporary city (Beaumont and Baker, 2011b).

Although there is a long history of faith groups intervening in the spaces of the city, these have tended to deal with welfare, poverty and exclusion (Cloke et al., 2005; Commission on Urban Life and Faith, 2006; Conradson, 2008), in predominantly marginal spaces of the city such as the street corner, the soup kitchen or the homeless refuge (Cloke et al., 2007; Conradson, 2003, 2006; Johnsen et al., 2005). Yet, more recently, some FBOs have sought to engage with social issues that have propelled them into central, public and more visible spaces of the city. Hence, Street-Pastors engage with a city’s nightlife with the stated aim of providing ‘practical help and advice for those at risk of involvement in anti-social behaviour or crime’ (Isaac and Davies, 2009: 31) and to ‘care, listen and dialogue’ with people on the streets (Street-Pastors, 2012). These activities are delivered by uniformed volunteers who patrol at weekends in the public spaces of the night-time economy.

Street-Pastors aim to fill gaps left by the emergency services. The police, for example, ‘are reluctant to engage with individuals drinking unless they are a harm to themselves, others or property’ (Jayne et al., 2010: 546) but Street-Pastors are more willing to engage with such people to ensure their safety and pre-empt any potentially criminal or anti-social behaviour. Other activities include administering first aid, supporting victims of crime and offering counselling to those who want it. Street-Pastors are not campaigners for temperance but, rather, aim to provide non-judgemental care for those on a night out. They might represent what Cloke et al. (2007: 1093) have referred to as ‘ethical citizens’ who are motivated primarily by ‘self-recognition in and self-identification with the needs of the other’ rather than political goals. In the case of Street-Pastors, these ethics are driven by a Christian faith that Pastors see as integral to their work.

All volunteers must be practising members of a Christian church and prayer is used extensively to support their work. Thus, Street-Pastors are supported by teams of ‘Prayer Pastors’ who pray for patrols as they work in the city. Overt proselytizing is, however, prohibited by the Street-Pastors’ own regulations and Pastors are instructed to speak about their faith only when asked. Nevertheless, Street-Pastors regard their work as an attempt to bring ‘the church onto the streets’ (Isaac and Davies, 2009: 210) and to engage widely with the public (see also Cloke, 2011). This represents what they term as a broader theology of ‘mission with partnership’ (Stevenson, 2009) that is manifest in a desire to engage with the emergency services, local authorities and those working in the night-time economy.

For some, this is problematic. Johns et al. (2009) argue that the mere presence of Street-Pastors on the streets draws attention to their religion and, with it, an implied set of values about behaviour in urban space. For these authors, Street-Pastors represent an addition to the growing range of actors engaged with urban surveillance (Lippert and Sleiman, 2012; Paasche et al., 2013). In many cities, Pastors are guided to those in need by closed-circuit television (CCTV) operators, the police or door staff. Pastors may also participate in police briefings, receive training from local authority partners and participate in crime and safety forums. Yet, when on patrol, Street-Pastors make efforts to distance themselves from the police in order to highlight that their role is not to police the night-time economy but, rather, to offer independent and confidential help to those who might need it. ²

Street-Pastors’ activities also reflect changing perceptions of the night-time economy by scholars. Initial work on the night-time economy tended to highlight alcohol-related crime and its policing (Bromley and Nelson, 2002; Thrift, 2005) but more recent work has attended to the plurality of experiences that occur in the night-time of the city (Hubbard, 2005; Jayne et al., 2008, 2010). This has drawn attention to ways in which urban space and social relations are produced and re-produced through everyday practices that determine how people and places are encountered (Middleton, 2010, 2011). A night out can be characterised by a rhythmic engagement with the city (Edensor, 2010). In part, this is structured by licencing laws (Hadfield and Measham, 2009) and policing (Hobbs et al., 2003; van Liempt and van Aalst, 2012; Yarwood, 2007) but is mostly a product of on-street rountines that make up a ‘patterned ground’ in which movement is steered by ‘habit, purposeful intent and the instruction of assembled technologies, rules, signs and symbols’ (Amin, 2012: 72). These might include the bus to town to meet friends, moving between venues, dancing, being allowed (or not) into clubs, as well as queuing for taxis, take-aways and cash-points.

Encounters in the night-time economy have often been negatively associated with aggression (Thrift, 2005) or disrespect for others (Valentine, 2008). If the law is broken or if injury occurs, members of the public may enter the rhythms of the police or paramedics working to shift patterns and patrolling particular routes that see them threading through the public spaces of the night-time economy (Reynolds, 2009; Yarwood, 2007). Yet, urban public space can also provide opportunities for new, unexpected and rewarding encounters (Jacobs, 1961). Ash Amin (2012: 62) argues:

mingling in urban public space … is about people with plural affiliations passing through, carrying multiple cares, sticking to familiar spaces, brushing past each other, bringing a host of pre-formed dispositions into the encounter.

Recent work stresses that many social encounters also foster kindness, citizenship and the creation of the ‘good city’ (Amin, 2006; Jayne et al., 2010; Laurier and Philo, 2006). Street-Pastors seek out these kinds of encounters using foot patrols to tread within and across the rhythms of the night-time economy. Walking is used as a deliberate and routine act in order to help shape urban space (de Certeau, 1984, 2000) and the nature of social encounters emerging from it (Middleton, 2010). In so doing, Street-Pastors have challenged and, arguably, affected the socio-rhythmic spaces of a night out. By paying attention to the everyday routines of Street-Pastors, it is possible to examine how these mobile practices contribute to the creation of post-secular places in contemporary cities (Beaumont and Baker, 2011a). In the remainder of the paper we pay particular attention to the ways in which rhythmic walking practices and encounters are significant to the creation of post-secular urban space.

Research context

This paper is borne out of a national study of Street-Pastors that we undertook in 2010–2011. Our research comprised of a national survey of groups, interviews with key actors and, most significantly for this paper, a series of mobile participant observations and interviews ³ with Street-Pastor groups in a range of urban localities that included London, other large cities and market towns across the UK. This ‘go along’ method (Kusenbach, 2003) involved us observing the experiences of Street-Pastors whilst providing the opportunity for informal discussions emerging from events that unfolded during the night patrol. It also facilitated valuable interactions with other key actors, such as door staff and the police, which enabled us to explore their reactions/reflections on the increasing presence and role of Street-Pastors. Informal follow up interviews also took place during tea breaks and at the end of the night, which provided a means of discussing more fully the shared events and experiences of the night’s activities.

We use a series of boxed vignettes to draw from observations of Street-Pastor patrols made in nine urban places. They are ordered in such a way as to tell a composite story of a night out with Street-Pastors and, in doing so, illustrate how patrolling rhythms unfold as the night progresses. By engaging with notions of routine it is not only possible to acknowledge the significance of the overarching structures of Street-Pastor patrols (O’Dell, 2009; Yarwood 2012) but also to highlight the dynamic spontaneity of the unfolding action.

Routine practices of being a Street-Pastor

Street-Pastor patrols start at 10 pm and finish in the early hours of the next morning. Few of the Street-Pastors we spoke to were themselves consumers of the night-time economy and so patrolling its spaces were frequently considered a disruption to their usual weekend routines (Ehn and Lofgren, 2010):

I think the most negative time is on a Saturday … from about 4 until about 9 o’clock I am shattered and all I want to do is go to bed and have a bottle of wine and watch rubbish on TV and I don’t want to go out and it looks cold and it might rain and all of that. Once I’m there, I’m absolutely fine and I have plenty of energy and I love it! (Lauren, Street-Pastor, large city)

In the above interview extract Lauren is responding to a question about whether there are any negative aspects of being a Street-Pastor. For Lauren, the less positive features of her Street-Pastor experiences are expressed through stating how she is usually ‘shattered’ in the hours leading up to her patrol night, whilst highlighting her concerns about the potential weather conditions. However, she then attends to balancing her experiences of the build up to patrolling as ‘negative time’ by drawing attention to feelings of energy and enjoyment that emerge once she’s there. Such trepidation and excitement was attended to by several Street-Pastors we spoke to as patrol night approaches.

When Pastors arrive at their base (usually a church building), these feelings are frequently reflected in the group dynamics of the teams (Box 1). The time before a patrol also provides an opportunity for Pastors to prepare for their patrols whilst marking a transformation from their ordinary routines to those of a Street-Pastor.

Prayers are said for strength, guidance and safety (Box 1). Prior to these prayers, Pastors prepare their kit:

We will then, at base, get out the mobile phones and the walkie-talkies and charge them up. That’s the first job. We get the patrol bags out, and the patrol bags contain a lot of equipment, a lot of heavy equipment. So we’ve got water bottles that we carry, about five water bottles, about six to eight pairs of flip-flops. A huge assortment of first aid equipment, including a rescue mask for mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. We carry a torch, batteries, pen, pads, mouth tube, sharps box. (Simon, Street-Pastor group leader, large city)

Simon describes the routines of preparing for a ‘typical’ night patrol and in so doing draws attention to the level of preparation involved in terms of the actual quantity of equipment the Street-Pastors carry. However, the detail that Simon provides in the interview extract in relation to this equipment also serves to emphasise its significance to their patrolling activities. This array of equipment, as our paper goes on to show, enables Street-Pastors to encounter a diverse constituency of people in a range of situations and spaces.

As part of the preparations for a night out, Street-Pastor volunteers are organised into mixed gender teams of four to five people. The number of teams deployed reflects the number of trained Pastors available and the size of the city. Each group has a leader who is equipped with the radio and/or mobile-phone to communicate with the Pastors’ base and, when available, the police, CCTV and door staff. Teams patrol together but may break off in pairs, often walking on either sides of the pavement. Pastors are instructed to always stay within eye contact of the rest of the group for safety and insurance purposes. All Street-Pastors complete a 12 week course that covers a range of skills including first aid, use of radios, drug and alcohol awareness, and how to diffuse aggression. A range of secular and religious agencies delivers this training.

The patrols themselves occupy a distinct set of time–space routines based around two-hour shifts punctuated by breaks back at a central base established in a church or community centre. The base itself is an important fixed space in the mobility of the patrol, providing a start and end point and providing a place for refuge and prayer. Each team follows a set route that has usually been planned with the police to ensure the safety and efficiency of the work of Street-Pastors. Sometimes only streets covered by closed-circuit television are patrolled. This is partly for reasons of safety but also because CCTV operators will direct Street-Pastors to incidents that are suited to their skills. Once on the streets, however, police and Pastors maintain their own patrol patterns and activities. Although they occasionally meet to exchange pleasantries and information, both maintain some distance as a means of demonstrating their organisational independence. Overall, the geographies of these patrols reflect that Street-Pastors have been enrolled into wider, secular networks of city management and surveillance. However, it is through a focus on these specific pedestrian routes and routines that a greater understanding can be gained of the practices of Street-Pastors and of a particular politics of engagement.

The emancipatory potential of walking in the city has been well documented. For example, Solnit (2001: 186) reflects on the freedom frequently associated with urban walking: ‘this uncharted identity with its illimitable possibilities is one of the distinctive qualities of urban living, a liberatory state for those who come to emancipate themselves from family and community expectation, to experiment with subculture and identity’. The excited atmosphere captured in the observations in Box 1 demonstrates how eagerly patrols are anticipated by Pastors, perhaps reflecting the extent to which these walking practices offer emancipation from their everyday routines. de Certeau (1984) considers walking as an emancipatory practice whereby pedestrian ‘tactics’ are performed as a mode of political resistance against the planners and architects ‘imposing order’ on city spaces. Further links have frequently been made between forms of citizenship and pedestrian movement. For example, Sennett (1970) considers how walking in urban public space provides opportunities for unpredictable encounters between strangers which are democratic and socially progressive. Yet much of the literature on urban walking reflects a romanticism whereby walking is often considered, without question, as a positive urban practice (see Middleton, 2009). Walking has also been adopted as a method of reading and understanding urban space. From the individual, detached and male gaze of the flâneur (see Pinder, 2001) to the drifting motions of the Situationists ‘derive’ (Debord, 1967), to the performance artists who use walking as an artistic medium, pedestrian practices have long been drawn upon as means of engaging with the city. However, the pedestrian practices of Street-Pastors not only highlight the complexity of urban walking but its heterogeneity in terms of how walking is understood as an emancipatory, politicised practice and as a means of reading/engaging with urban space.

Routes are planned to allow Pastors to patrol at a slow walking space, giving them time to both meet and engage with people. However, as can be seen in the next example, these walking routes and activities are a far cry from the unplanned, unpredictable and emancipatory pedestrian ‘tactics’ detailed by those such as de Certeau (1984):

the routes … were chosen for us but we developed them. The routes mean that roughly every 20 minutes we’ll be round again … I learnt that if you do consistent routes, people get to know that you’ll be round again … and that’s what we operate. We can be found, that’s why CCTV can call me in December last year and say that a WPC [Woman Police Constable] needs your help, because they could see me, they knew where to find my teams. And we were available instantly. So it’s proven to be a reliable and conclusive method of patrolling. So we’re not just willy-nilly where shall we go tonight? It’s all set. (Simon, Street-Pastor group leader, large city)

Simon positions his account of patrolling routes in relation to the professional nature in which they develop. For example, he emphasises the training in which he learnt about the importance of the consistency of routes and how they are ‘a reliable and conclusive method of patrolling’ as opposed to being ‘just willy-nilly’. He also stresses the professional conduct of the teams patrolling these routes in relation to the other agencies they interact with, such as CCTV operators and the police, and how they are led by team leaders and can be ‘available instantly’. Simon’s account articulates how patrols aim to follow a routine that maximises the chances of encountering people on the streets and is informed by training and other, professional agencies. In other words, Simon’s account draws attention to how Street-Pastors use their pedestrian routes and practices as a means of reading and engaging with urban space. A significant feature of these routes and activities is their repetition that aligns with the rhythmicity of urban outreach work detailed by Hall (2010). This sits in stark contrast to the counter rhythmicity of approaches such as flâneurie where pedestrian movements are ‘a deliberate counter rhythm to the regular and quotidian patterns of everyday life in the city’ (Middleton, 2011: 97). Rather, the extract highlights how these patrols show an awareness of the rhythms of the night-time economy and how Pastors, through regular patrols, develop a good knowledge of the social geographies of their towns and cities. Thus, early in the evening they might take the opportunity to talk to the staff of take-away outlets or door staff while they were not busy (see, for example, Box 2). Later, Street-Pastors position themselves at places that are busy, such as pubs at closing time or taxi-ranks, in order to maximise their opportunities for encounters. For as one Street-Pastor explained: ‘the rationale for that is that that’s where there are lots of concentrations of drinkers and partygoers and revellers’.

Street-Pastors are also aware of events that influenced or disrupted these patterns. In one market town, for example, Pastors knew that the number of people on a night out varied according to the day that people were paid. At the start of the month, close to pay-day, people would spend money travelling to a nearby city to go out. Towards the end of the month, with less disposable income, people elected to stay in their home town or not go out at all. Thus, the night-time economy followed a monthly rhythm that was well known and anticipated by Pastors.

Although we have emphasised the rhythmic nature of patrolling and the night-time economy, these routes, places and events are not set in stone and patrols can deviate. For example, as Street-Pastors are practising Christians, many articulated how their beliefs had led them to places where they considered people were in need. For example, Simon recounts arriving at a park bench the moment a blanket blew away from a sleeping homeless man:

And as I open the gate to go in, make sure he’s okay, the space blanket lifts off with the wind and falls on the floor. I went over to him and the best way of describing him is he had a drunken snore. He was laid out on the bench. And my water bottle is at his head. And I picked up the space blanket and I folded it round him and I tucked it in, all the way along, and I had to walk away … If I hadn’t turned up at that second, see I do believe in God-incidences, not coincidences, we turned up at the very second the space blanket blew away. (Simon Street-Pastor group leader, large city)

For this Pastor, his actions were not only guided by his training and equipment but also positioned through articulations of faith and his belief in ‘God-incidences’. It illustrates the importance placed by Pastors on understanding urban-nightscapes as spiritual and, at the same time, worldly places. Encounters are understood in the same way and are often imbued and understood with divine significance. As Dewsbury and Cloke (2009: 696) note, this reflects a ‘spiritual landscape’ in which experiences are understood in relation to ‘bodily existence, felt practice and faith in things that are immanent’.

Patrols can also be called by the police, CCTV operators or other actors to deal with incidences with which they require assistance. Street-Pastors frequently emphasise how they have become valued by these agencies for their ability to deal with people who are vulnerable and to provide practical help, emotional support or counselling. Examples we observed might include walking with a lone woman who has lost her friends, administering minor first aid or assisting a person incapacitated by drink to a taxi. It is not in the remit of the emergency services to deal with these people as they have not committed a crime (in the case of the police) or are not seriously injured thus meriting the attention of the paramedics (Jayne et al., 2010).

Thus, in many ways, the walking practices of Street-Pastors can be considered an extension of traditional surveillance such as CCTV and the police. A further set of ‘eyes on the streets’ (Jacobs, 1961). This sits in direct opposition to de Certeau’s positioning of walking as a deliberate politicised act against the panoptic conceptions of planners and architects of the city. However, that is not to say that the walking practices of Street-Pastors cannot be considered to have a politics of their own. As Box 3 illustrates, there is a distinct politics of engagement to the encounters that Street-Pastors seek out that is made visible through their pedestrian routes and routines.

The importance of encounters to Street-Pastors operation is such that each ‘significant’ social interaction (see Box 3) occurring on a patrol is logged using record cards noting the nature of the exchange and is usually supported by supplication from Prayer Pastors. As the observations in Box 3 illustrate, ‘significant’ or ‘successful’ interactions are those that involve a conversation rather than just a greeting. The following discussion explores these encounters in more detail and attempts to position them in relation to the mixing strategies adopted by Street-Pastors and the associated politics of these engagements.

Rhythmic encounters

When shadowing patrols, we noted three main ways in which encounters were initiated by Street-Pastors.

First, and most significantly, Street-Pastors aim to mix with people out on the streets. They employ a range of strategies to do so but by far the most common approach was simply to say ‘hello’ to people as patrols walked through the city. Indeed, one Pastor said that she did not like the term patrol and, instead, preferred to think of it simply as ‘mixing’. Positive responses to these ‘hospitable gestures’ (Bell, 2007; Laurier and Philo, 2006) are perhaps aided by the carnvalesque atmosphere of a city at night. By immersing themselves in the rhythm of the night, Pastors are able to contrive opportunities to engage with those in the street. This is one typical example of a conversation that occurred between a Street-Pastor and a man heading from one pub to another:

Amin (2012: 72) considers that ‘in this mingling, strangers are less mindful of each other or of the swirls of the crowd’ so that ‘… the possibility of newness always hovers in public spaces … always demanding those who pass through an ability to respond to the unexpected’. Here the man was startled to find Christians in the midst of the night-time economy rather than, say, in church. So, while the presence of Street-Pastors could be a surprise, this surprise also provided the opportunity for dialogue. As we note later, this opens up opportunities for Street-Pastors to discuss their faith.The surprise expressed by the man indicates that this encounter was significant as it was out-of-the-ordinary to him. It provided a pause within the wider rhythm of the night-time city that juxtaposed with the expected patterns of encounters (Amin, 2006). These pauses are meaningful to Street-Pastors, as Box 4 illustrates.

Second, Pastors went over to talk to people working in the night-time economy. These included shop-keepers or those serving in take-away outlets, many of whom had displayed information about Street-Pastors in their premises. The aim of these encounters was to provide reassurance to people working at night but also to gain information about the night and how it was proceeding:

I can go up to a burger bar person, I can shake their hand, say good evening, ‘how are you doing? Is everything okay? Are you all quiet?’ And they’ll chat with me for a bit and then I’ll say I’ll be round again soon, and they’ll know. (Simon, Street-Pastor group leader, large city)

Most workers we observed responded in a friendly manner, although some Street-Pastors reported that door staff and bouncers had initially been cynical about their efforts. Others highlighted that door staff had offered to help Pastors out if they ran into any aggressive or violent situations. ⁴

Third, interactions are enabled and aided by the ‘kit’ carried by Street-Pastors. A blue, corporate uniform (Figure 1) is the most obvious example of this. The warm, waterproof, practical clothing contrasts noticeably with the ways in which clubbers are dressed, allowing Pastors to be identified from them and, in turn, allowing interaction. During one patrol we observed, one Street-Pastor was very concerned that they had misplaced their Street-Pastor baseball cap. As well as being a significant part of their uniform received upon the successful completion of training, they also make Pastors easily identifiable to CCTV operators and police. Upon being probed further, the Street-Pastor also explained that revellers frequently ‘stole’ the hat to try it on. Without it, the potential resource for interaction was lost.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

Street-Pastors in uniform interacting with consumers and providers of the night-time economy.

Indeed, a strategy of giving objects away proved a remarkably successful way of enabling encounters. Water is given to dehydrated drinkers, space blankets to the cold and flip-flops to women who find it difficult to walk in high heels as an evening progresses. For some, receiving something from a Street-Pastor is a trophy of a ‘good night out’ and we witnessed countless requests of ‘have you got any flip-flops?’ from both women and men. It was later revealed that the volume of men asking for flip-flops (usually as a joke) had become so great that some Street-Pastor groups had started handing out lollypops in response to these requests. The rationale was that although some people did not actually need alternative footwear, it was important that they were given something as to turn people away empty-handed might be perceived as rejection. Although these gifts are of immense practical value, they also provide a reason for people to talk to Pastors for as Laurier et al. (2006: 14) highlight; ‘under most circumstances city dwellers do not initiate conversations with people with whom they are unacquainted unless by way of some legitimate mechanism that provides basis for a conversation’. Objects such as flip-flops provide a legitimate resource for conversation, or what Sacks (1992) refers to as a ‘ticket’.

‘Tickets’ such as flip-flops provide a mechanism for a conversation and, in doing so, also open up the possibility of conversations about faith. It is important to note that Pastors are explicitly forbidden by their teams to preach or attempt to convert the public to their faith; a regulation that is strictly enforced by team leaders. Pastors are, though, encouraged to articulate that they are a Christian organisation. So, when people inevitably asked Pastors what they were doing, who they were and why they were giving goods away, the standard response was that ‘they were from local churches and helping to keep people safe’. As Box 5 illustrates, the transformative potential of social interactions beyond the initial encounter are a key motivation for some Street-Pastors to be on the street. The religious framing of these relationships in the street, especially the streets of the night-time economy, is positioned as an emergent feature of these encounters. The leaflets that Street-Pastors distribute (detailed in Box 5) are an example of a resource, or ‘ticket’, to initiate social encounters. In this instance it was hoped that it would have a transformative potential beyond that of that social interaction. In other words, it was hoped the leaflet would have some impact on the young woman and her faith.

While Street-Pastors agree not to evangelise overtly, many acknowledge that these conversations allow them an opportunity to talk about their faith. The following is an example of how faith can act as an emergent resource in their night-time encounters:

In some ways it’s almost like when you’ve got young kids asking you about sex, you only tell them the smallest amount that you can get away with and then if they want to know more, they’ll ask more … people might say ‘so you’re Christians,’ so you go, ‘yeah we are’. They might say, ‘well what do you believe then?’ I mean if people ask me outright I would tell them what I believe, but I’m not telling them what to believe and I’ll always make that clear. I mean sometimes people come up to us and say, ‘will you pray for us’, and if they do that, then yes we will. (Lauren, Street-Pastor, large city)

In the above example the conversation about faith is positioned as recipient-led. Hypothetical examples of what ‘might’ be said are reported. The conversation trajectory is generated on the basis of the other party’s curiosity. Questions provide the platform for further articulation of the Street-Pastor’s faith. The point being that such deviations of faith are claimed as standing in contrast to any persuasive evangelical discourse. Indeed, in this particular example an outright question concerning the religious footing of their patrolling is a general strategy articulated of never telling people what to believe, only what the Pastor believes. The sensitive topic of religion is equated in this Pastor’s discourse to that of imparting the facts of life to children. Religion is only made manifest on the basis of people declaring an interest and then only in terms of the existing beliefs of the Pastor. It is not positioned as an evangelical opportunity for converting someone else. Religion is clearly at the core of the Street-Pastor’s practice but is not immediately apparent. Rather, a strategy of encounters, through their pedestrian patrols, are centred around a particular politics of engagement which provided opportunities for such discussions to emerge and unfold.

Conclusions

This paper has explored the geographies of Street-Pastors in relation to their growing presence in spaces of the night-time. As such, specific attention has been drawn to the role of Street-Pastors within the urban night-time economy and in so doing has contributed to more nuanced accounts of ‘drinking spaces’ (Jayne et al., 2010). More specifically, discussion has highlighted how Street-Pastors have become established in UK city centres through the use of routines to synchronise their patrolling activities with the rhythms of the night-time economy. The significance of these rhythmic practices emerges from focusing on both the routines that inform and unfold from the patrolling ‘routes’ and the everyday routines of the Street-Pastors themselves. Furthermore, the paper has drawn attention to the importance of rhythm for understanding the strategy of encounters that Street-Pastors have adopted which in turn makes visible the micro-geographies of how urban encounters unfold. The encountering strategies employed by Street-Pastors revolve around the distribution of goods, such as flip-flops or bottles of water, that, initially at least, serve as a ‘token’ to start conversations and contact with the public. This strategy has become so successful that Street-Pastors are known largely by the public for being the distributors of goods or, more simply, as ‘the flip-flop’ people. As a result, Street-Pastors are themselves subjects of encounters as people seek them out for these items.

At one level the encounters discussed in this paper can be positioned as examples of pockets of urban sociability that counter more negative accounts of urban social encounters (Thrift, 2005). Indeed, the performances of Street-Pastors may reflect the optimism of the ‘post-secular’ city, whereby faith and non-faith groups can work together to produce spaces of ethical citizenship and care (Cloke, 2010). As such, the empirical data emerging from our research provides an alternative scenario for how night-time spaces are understood. In other words, spaces associated with night-life consumption are not somewhere usually associated with the presence of Christians or religious groups. It is therefore important that these spaces are also considered in the context of growing concerns with the ‘post-secular city’ (Beaumont and Baker, 2011a) whereby the continuing significance of religion to urban life is acknowledged and engaged with both theoretically and empirically (Gorski and Altınordu, 2008).

Indeed, Street-Pastors can be argued to embody a certain post-secular ethic: they are trained by both secular and religious groups; view the city as a spiritual landscape yet are attuned to its material rhythms and needs; and work with a wide range of secular partners in the contexts of their own (varied) Christian faith. For some, the work of Street-Pastors illustrates the kind of secular/faith rapprochement that is valued by some commentators for providing spaces of hope and care in the city (Cloke and Beaumont, 2012). Street-Pastors aim to provide care to people that would otherwise fall through the safety net of the emergency services. Yet it is important not to romanticise the social interactions that unfold through their activities. While Street-Pastors work with secular organisations to achieve a post-secular form of working, they remain an exclusively Christian organisation. Unlike some of the examples cited by Cloke and Beaumont (2012), Pastors offer opportunities for Christians and non-Christians to work together in the same organisation. Some regard this with alarm. For example, Johns et al. (2009) call for a wider debate about the place of religion on the street and question the motives and effectiveness of Street-Pastoring.

Street-Pastors, like any voluntary group, have a spatiality that brings them into contact with some groups and not others. As Street-Pastors work in the public spaces of the night-time economy they are more likely to come into contact with particular groups of people at particular times and places. Although we have emphasised encounter, not everyone will encounter or choose to engage with a Street-Pastor. For example, the private space of pubs and clubs are unseen to their gaze. Thus, their primary target for engagement are ‘revellers’ rather than the homeless (who may be cared for by other voluntary groups) and, despite positioning their work as non-judgemental, are more likely to offer care to groups they perceive as vulnerable, particularly young women. Their work not only reflects an ethics of care, ground rules for engagement and formal training but also personal views of who is, or is not, in need of help. Greater attention is needed on these micro-geographies of engagement, as Valentine (2008) points out, to appreciate how Street-Pastors fit into a broader net of social care and service provision outlined at the start of this paper.

Finally, greater attention is also needed on the spiritual practices of Street-Pastors and how their work embodies and performs Christian ethics and belief. Although Street-Pastors subscribe to non-judgemental, non-evangelical practices, there is a requirement to be a practising Christian to serve as a Street-Pastor (defined as regular church attendance for a year). Thus people of other faith and no faiths are currently excluded. At present, Street-Pastors fill a gap in service provision but, with the advent of the ‘Big Society’ ⁵ and cuts in public spending, there is a potential for Pastors to fill a greater role or to be relied on more heavily by statutory providers. Potential scenarios include an increased involvement in the surveillance networks of police, CCTV operators or private security such as door staff. Therefore, despite Street-Pastors’ good intentions, it is important for researchers to examine the consequences and broader politics of such a move and the implications of religious, as well as secular, practices in the management of the night-time economy.